Instructors
generally reach a fairly accurate gauge of their scholars'
powers. Henry Adams himself held the opinion that his instructors
were very nearly right, and when he became a professor in his
turn, and made mortifying mistakes in ranking his scholars, he
still obstinately insisted that on the whole, he was not far
wrong. Student or professor, he accepted the negative standard
because it was the standard of the school.
He never knew what other students thought of it, or what they
thought they gained from it; nor would their opinion have much
affected his. From the first, he wanted to be done with it, and
stood watching vaguely for a path and a direction. The world
outside seemed large, but the paths that led into it were not
many and lay mostly through Boston, where he did not want to go.
As it happened, by pure chance, the first door of escape that
seemed to offer a hope led into Germany, and James Russell Lowell
opened it.
Lowell, on succeeding Longfellow as Professor of
Belles-Lettres, had duly gone to Germany, and had brought back
whatever he found to bring. The literary world then agreed that
truth survived in Germany alone, and Carlyle, Matthew Arnold,
Renan, Emerson, with scores of popular followers, taught the
German faith. The literary world had revolted against the yoke of
coming capitalism -- its money-lenders, its bank directors, and
its railway magnates.
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